| Two things that might assist us: could you do something to ensure
we all have some iodea of which "end" is which on the decks? I.e.,
if they're in a line, orient them (say, East to West) and tell us
which is Deck 1 (say, the easternmost one)? This will help immenseluy.
Also, with DECworld coming up, your deadline is a little rough on
some of us.
Steve Kallis, Jr.
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| I don't know how much more detail I can give you over the example in
the base topic. Each deck is represented as a row (horizontal line) of
numbers. The cards are presented in left-to-right order, with the
left-most card being presented first, the right-most card being
presented last. The decks are numbered from 1 to 30 with the first
deck in the test as the first (top-most) row and denoted by having the
"1:" at the start of the line; the last deck in the test is the last
(bottom-most) row and denoted by having the "30:" at the start of the
line.
As far as the time limit is concerned, please do what you can.
If I don't get enough mailgrams by the cutoff date for the test
to be meaningful I'll have no choice but to extend the date.
Thanks again!
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| re .2:
Okay, but just to make sure: If you have a sort of square matrix
and you're facing it with the square North of you, the topmost deck
runs West to East; if you're facing East, the topmost line runs
North-South. The idea of specifying an orientation is so that
you don't get say, an inverted matrix. Some of these paranormal
reradings _might_ have some spatial orientation.
Steve Kallis, Jr.
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| RE: 84.1
One of the "funny" things about ESP is that things like this doesn't
usually effect it, with an important exception which I'll get to in a
moment.
One way of looking at it is that it is no harder to find out by ESP
two things (e.g., the position/orientation of the target and its
identity) as one thing (its identity). This doesn't mean that if you
guess one you'll probably guess the other, since that requires two
*separate* guesses. It's only if a single guess requires both (or more)
pieces of information simultaneously that this applies.
How much general this is is a little hard to say, but it definitely
applies to tests of this kind. Its on precisely this kind of test that
this was discovered.
The big exception is that people are much likely to do poorly if they
believe that they are doing something harder. There is a tendency for
ESP to act whatever way we expect. In other words, if it really worries
you it may cause problems. If you can accept my word for it that you
don't need the information then you won't. If it bothers you slightly,
then try picturing a particular orientation. Whether or not its the
right one, it will give your subconscious something to focus on.
Topher
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| Dave (.5) makes a good point. I could have conducted the
test either way, but I think logistics prevent my performing it
as a true ESP test. I say that because for the ESP-style test to
work I would probably have to announce a time where I would look
at the decks and focus on them for a while. Although I'm not opposed
to doing that, I doubt that as many people from all over the world
would be able to, say, devote 30 minutes at 12:00 EST on Feb 24.
Hence, I went with this more "pre-cog" test in hopes of getting
more participants (although to date I have no participants).
The ESP idea may work if one can "queue up" ESP waves. Would you all
buy into the results if I looked at the decks at a given time, and then
you could attempt to access whatever you access in order to receive my
(previous) thoughts on the decks?
If you folks here think that I'd have better luck with an actual ESP
test, reply here (including ideas on how to overcome the logistic
problems) and we'll go for it that way. Thanks.
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| RE: 84.5
We have a problem of terminology. I keep on meaning to write a full
terminology note, but haven't had time. This partial one will have to
do for now.
The term ESP is a technical term from parapsychology, having a fairly
precise meaning.
The terms from parapsychology I'll be defining are based on the
classification of various phenomena.
Classification is based essentially on the conditions of testing rather
than any implied intrinsic differences among them. This is because we
don't know whether two psi phenomena which appear different really have
exactly the same cause or whether two psi phenomena which appear the
same really have different causes. The classification scheme,
attempting to avoid the assumptions of unproven theories, is based on
our ability to distinguish circumstances. Never-the-less, it is at
times somewhat arbitrary.
Most parapsychology today studies one of two broad classifications of
phenomena: psychokinesis (PK) and extrasensory perception (ESP). There
are lots of other phenomena (such as poltergeists, apparitions, and
post-mortem survival) which are also studied by parapsychologists but
this is not currently the main effort.
Roughly speaking, PK is the ability to effect things outside of our own
bodies without using normal means such as our muscles -- to move them,
change their temperature, effect how they fall, etc.
ESP is the ability to know things we don't "normally" have any way of
knowing.
One form of ESP is "clairvoyance" which is knowing about things which
currently exist but which, because of distance or physical barriers,
we have no normal way of knowing about.
Another form of ESP is "precognition" which is knowing about something
which does not yet exist and which there is no reasonable way of
deducing from things which currently exist. We only speak about
precognition when we can pretty much eliminate the possibility of
clairvoyance.
Another form, only occasionally spoken about, is "retrocognition",
which is knowing about something which occurred in the past. In a test
we can only know that correct retrocognition has taken place if some
form of record is kept for us to check against. The ESP connection may
have been made to the record rather than the event, so retrocognition
is viewed as a special case of clairvoyance, in which the apparent
target is a past event rather than, say a card image in the present.
Historically the first type of ESP studied was "telepathy" the ability
of one person to know what another is thinking when that could not be
deduced normally. Telepathy might also be a form of PK since the
"agent" (person who's "mind is being read") might be "projecting" their
thoughts to the "percipient" (person who's "reading the other's mind").
When telepathy is being thought of this way this is sometimes called
"active agent telepathy".
Telepathy suffers from a similar problem as retrocognition. To make an
objective test, without problems of the agent's memory possibly being
distorted, an external record has to be made at some point. If this is
done at or before the time the percipient tries to guess, then this
might be a case of clairvoyance. If this is done after the percipient
guesses then this might be a case of precognition. In either case,
telepathy cannot really be distinguished from the other two.
However, it is frequently the case that it is useful, for psychological
reasons if for no others, to act as if you were doing a telepathy test.
So if someone is concentrating on, or at least looking at, the targets
when the test is performed than this is called a "general ESP" or
"GESP" test. This is to help remind researchers that the target might
be either the agent's record or the agent's mind. Some writers and
researchers just go ahead and use the term telepathy, figuring that the
distinction is now well known and doesn't have to be emphasized.
You seem to be confusing the term GESP, which would require Barry or
someone else to look at the targets, with ESP which doesn't make that
requirement. Whether the test is precognition or clairvoyance depends
on whether or Barry generates the targets before or after the guesses
are made, and if after, whether or not he does it in such a way (such
as looking in specific place in a table of random numbers) that the
results could have been predicted beforehand if someone knew enough.
Topher
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